World War Two skeletons washed from Marshall Islands graves 'by rising seas'

Graves of 26 Japanese soldiers exposed by high tides, fuelling warnings that
low-lying islands face an existential threat from rising sea levels

A cemetery on the shoreline of Marshall Islands Ailinglaplap Atoll under threat from rising sea levels (File)Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney

10:30AM BST 07 Jun 2014

The skeletons of 26 Japanese soldiers who died during World War II have been washed from their graves in the low-lying Marshall Islands, prompting warnings by the nation that its future is under threat from rising sea levels.

The nation of 70,000 people revealed the extent of the devastation during United Nations climate change talks in Germany, saying global warming was ruining crops and that sea rises were overrunning parts of the islands. The nation’s 1,000-plus islands are only about six feet above sea level – and scientists are predicting a three- to six-foot rise in sea levels by the end of the century.

"There are coffins and dead people being washed away from graves - it's that serious," said Tony de Brum, the foreign minister. "Even the dead are affected".

The nation, which lies between Hawaii and Australia, was the scene of heavy fighting during World War II, when the United States defeated the Japanese, who had a naval base there. The US military has a base on the islands and has used it for nuclear testing.

Virtually everybody in the Marshall Islands has been affected by the recently crumbling coastline, including Christopher Loeak, the nation’s president, who has watched over the years as the beaches where he fished as a boy have vanished and roads on his island home have been moved inland.

He told The Telegraph earlier this year that he was “afraid for our children and grandchildren”.

“The island is not only getting narrower - it is getting shorter,” he said.

“That is our worry – the disappearing of the land. People have had to move on many islands. We are not only talking about the land but the trees, our food security. We have lost rows and rows of coconut trees – they have been washed away.”

In Majuro, the nation’s capital, the damage from king tides and coastal erosion is unmistakeable.

The town consists of one main road that runs the length of the island, leaving the waterfront homes and shops on either side glaringly exposed to rising seas and high tides.

Across the country, coconut trees have washed away. There is less land to grow breadfruit, one of the nation’s main food sources, which cannot grow on soil where the groundwater has been infiltrated by the salty sea water.

Mr de Brum said the skeletons on Santo Island were exposed after high tides struck the coastline from February to April. Unexploded bombs and military equipment has also washed up.

"We think they're Japanese soldiers, but there are no broken bones or any indication of being war casualties," he said. "We think maybe it was suicide or something similar. We had the exhumed skeletons sampled by the US Navy in Pearl Harbour [in Hawaii] and they helped identify where they are from, to assist in the repatriation efforts…. The Japanese are sending a team in to help us in September."

The Marshall Islands and other low-lying Pacific nations have pushed for international action on climate change, saying they face an existential threat from rising sea levels. A recent report from the UN Environment Programme found that sea levels in the Pacific were rising faster than in the rest of the world. From 1993 to 2009, the rise was 0.47 inches (12 millimetres) a year, almost four times the global average.

However, despite extensive damage to parts of the Marshall Islands' coast, researchers have begun to cast doubt on claims that the Pacific islands have already begun to disappear or that the damage is due to rises in sea levels that have occurred in recent decades. Indeed, while experts say the nation does face a long-term threat, new findings show that many of the islands are largely either remaining stable or growing.

Dr Murray Ford, from the University of Auckland, has been comparing aerial photographs of the islands taken by the United States military during World War II with photographs taken in the 1970s and in recent years. He found that many islands are getting larger and that the shrinking shoreline along coastal villages has largely been caused by commercial development, building of seawalls and land reclamation.

“It is a much more complicated story than the island being washed away,” he said.

“What the people are seeing is real – there are graves and houses falling into the water – but often it is a result of engineering and sea walls being built inappropriately. Some parts of some islands are eroding as sand has moved around but some islands are growing in size.”

A newly-published study showed a southern atoll which was devastated by a 1905 typhoon has grown back to a stable state, with its vegetated area expanding by about a quarter since 1945; other smaller islands joined together to form a single landmass.

Dr Ford said climate change is causing sea levels to rise at an increasing rate and the phenomenon poses a serious threat to the islands. But, he said, the damage that has occurred so far has been due to “inappropriate” construction, while some islands have grown due to natural accretion and endlessly shifting shorelines.

“The sea level is rising and will accelerate and on the ground the response will not be pretty,” Dr Ford said.

“But the islands have shown a wide range of change and not all of that is erosion… The story in Majuro is very much a human-driven impact on the island. In the outer islands, it is driven much more by waves, currents and movements of the sands.”

The scientists are still trying to understand the changes in the islands, which can shift shape over time periods ranging from hours to centuries and can sometimes erode during winter and grow back in the summer.

An expert on coastal changes, Professor Colin Woodroffe, from the University of Wollongong, said population increases and inhabitation of low-lying lands are probably playing a part in the increasing signs of damage.

“To say the little bit of rise has led to the erosion is too simple,” he said. “The islands are already quite vulnerable to erosion - human settlement is the most important factor.”

For the residents, these unpredictable changes continue to wreak havoc and leave a question mark over their future.

At the northern end of the small island of Laura, Barmi Rockmido, 51, a mother of five, points to the dilapidated house next door, whose neighbours fled as the land around the house began to erode.

Standing on a dwindling patch of grass that was once her lush garden with an outdoor oven and a well, Mrs Rockmido says she accepts that her home may be next.